Photo courtesy of Pixar/Disney
Pixar’s new summer blockbuster, Wall E, goes to show that memorable characters and well written story lines always shine through no matter how impressive the visual effects are. But, you all ready know that and I am going to share more about the technical aspect of Wall E.
For any of you 3D animators, riggers, VFX, etc. you will appreciate how much work was put into developing all the complex systems in Wall E. He was modeled in Maya and rigged using proprietary Pixar voodoo black magic [click the link below to find out how]. A great example of the complexity of Wall E is the rigging system and modeling of his treads. Cars, which featured a flashy red race car, Lightening McQueen, had the same vertex count as one of the treads on Wall E’s treads. The vertex count averaged around 140,000 per tread! The Maya file after it was done came in at a whopping 180mb!
Wall E’s expressions were masterfully crafted through his binocular eyes and protruding neck. You could stare deeply into his eyes and see life in his character. Pixar tries to keep everything very realistic, but they bent the rules a little bit in order to give life through his eyes by creating unrealisitc visual planes in his lenses. You can definitely feel a richness of character during the closeups on his face. Though Wall E lacked a mouth he made robot sounds which were designed by the same audio designer for R2D2. Wall E is definitely an amazing 3D accomplishment.
Thanks for letting me geek out, I’ll try to do it sparignly. And if you want to find out more about the technical side of Pixar’s Wall E check out this great article from CG Society.
